The Chicken Challenge

Lately, I’m feeling a bit pissy about my food habits. Yeah, I said pissy, so what? It’s true. I have been a mess since my schedule has really kicked my buns. Snacking after dinner is an issue for me. I’m also finding on Saturdays when I have REALLY long days teaching that I am making bad food choices. I’m selecting foods that just aren’t right for me, and I’m also subject to the constraints not being able to cook or refrigerate my choices at school. Enter Wawa.

Wawa is this glorious chain we have on the east coast that makes the most incredible food that you will ever get at a gas station. Yes, I said gas station. They have the best sandwiches, soups, and salads. And although they have some healthier options, temptation is hard core in that place. I may get a healthy sandwich and apple, then I find myself putting baked chips or starburst next to it on the counter. Sure, treating yourself now and again is good. But it should be just that – a now and again thing. Like Tom and Donna from Parks and Recreation, they take the time to say “Treat yo self!” once a year.

Ok, so back to it. I have noticed a slow in my weight loss and have been hovering in the same 5 pound range for about a month. I am only 25 pounds away from my “dream” weight and although I’m not SO stuck on numbers, it would be a nice milestone to reach, especially for my wedding. So I have decided the only option is to focus in on what I can control. Right now I still have about two weeks left of band which means a few more bad Saturdays. I have resigned myself to the fact that these are circumstantial and will come to an end when band ends.

That leaves after dinner snacking. I think perhaps I don’t eat well enough at dinner and then allow myself to go nuts later. But I am also a busy chick and don’t really feel like cooking a Norman Rockwell-worthy dinner by the time I walk in the door. I did, however, recall a sorority sister I will call B. She is a mother to a very rambunctious 2-year-old boy, a nurse, and a wife. Pretty much a superwoman, right? What’s more, she’s just recently relocated, because moving is so easy, and I’m pretty convinced her husband, a doctor, works nutso hours. Yet she is always posting awesome recipes and comments on Facebook about her food for the week. Turns out, she cooks big once a week or so and eats well the entire week. I asked her for a few sites that she frequents and she recommended Smitten Kitchen and The Pioneer Woman. The recipes looked great and inspired me to see if I could take it a step further. I started perusing my local store ads and I found roasting chickens on sale for 99 cents a pound, and so the Chicken Challenge was born!

So here are the rules:

I will cook 4-5 pounds of chicken each Sunday. We will have a dinner of roasted chicken on Sundays only.

I will make the leftover chicken into 5 meals, one for each week night, in the categories of soup, sandwich, salad, pasta and general meal.

I will prepare as many of the components as reasonable to the week night recipes on Sunday.

No genre of food will be repeated back to back, so I will not make tacos one night and then mexican lasagna the next night.

All week night meals will require 15 minutes or less prep time and 45 minutes or less heating/cooking time.

For our purposes, I ended up purchasing chicken breasts since we’re not big dark meat fans in my house. Not only that, but they were also on sale for 99 cents a pound, so we made out like bandits! I also bought a bunch of other stuff that I thought I would need based on the recipes I dug up and wanted to try. I spent about $130 at the store late last night with creepy late-night cashier guy – I was shopping at 11 PM because I didn’t want to miss such a good price on the chicken that expired at midnight. Anyway, the meal plan I put together in Excel calls for Sunday dinners of roasted chicken and then 5 weeknight meals for 4 weeks, or 24 meals total. I assume will probably pick up another $20 or so in extra stuff I forgot, but that comes out to $6.25 a meal, where there will undoubtedly be leftovers for lunch the next day. So as it turns out the Chicken Challenge will most likely be cost-effective as well as healthy.

This will all begin on Sunday, so we’ll have an entire month of chicken. I’m looking forward to putting the final touches on the plan and seeing how it goes. M is just happy that I’m happy, and though I’m sure he would prefer it to be red meat, I think he will survive. And who knows, if this goes well we could change this to ground turkey next month. Wish us luck!

3 Comments

So loving this chicken challenge. I might have to try this for myself.
You should try to take photos of some one the meals and post them for my enjoyment. Oh did i say “my”? I mean all of yours readers 🙂